Eternity
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: A conversation at sunset, if conversations involved swearing and insults. Sam has an argument. Big shocker. Futurefic, standalone, canon universe. Rated for swearing.


Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "What I've Done" by Linkin Park.

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Eternity

"What did you just say?"

She turned, pushing an unruly black bang out of her face. Raising an eyebrow, she gave me her best flat look. It wasn't very good, since the corners of her lips kept trying to climb upward. She said in a laughing tone, "I said what I was thinking. I know it's a little premature, but that doesn't stop me from thinking it."

Oh, that smug little brat! "All right, I know what you said, but why the hell would you think that? I've been nothing but accepting of you. I didn't kick you out when you showed up out of nowhere years after the last time Danny saw you, I didn't ditch you when the Guys in White showed up to take you, I even helped decorate your freaking bedroom. What is wrong with you?"

"Nice to see you're being honest."

"Like you didn't start it," I continued, letting more and more venom creep into my voice.

She sighed, drawing a breath sharply and slowly letting it slip out. Looking off to my side somewhere, she said firmly, "You don't really want to know."

"Is that a challenge?" I scoffed.

"No. As Sis would put it, it is a statement of fact, no more and no less."

"Does he really let you call her 'Sis'?" I asked accusingly. "It's not like you're really a Fenton."

"The Fentons are ghost hunters," she said disparagingly. "I wouldn't want to be one of them if I could, but I like Danny and I really look up to Jazz. Besides, he's not the one who has to give me permission if I want to call her that. It's Jazz's decision, and she doesn't mind at all, unlike someone I could name." Now she was glaring at me.

"I'm not the interloper here!"

"Really? You could destroy him with a word, and it wouldn't even have to be magic. He does whatever you say. If you told him to cut his own throat, he'd only hesitate long enough to lay down towels so you wouldn't have to scrub his blood out of the linoleum."

"I wouldn't!" My voice cracked. "Why do you think I'd do that?"

She shook her head a few times, face scrunched up in frustration. "I don't think you _would_, but the point is that you _could_. He'd do anything for you. Literally."

"So?"

"So. Just like that, you accept that he'd do anything for you, like he's obligated to serve you." Now her voice was venomous, her eyes glowing acid.

"You're twisting my words!" I fumbled for the right thing to say. "I don't think he owes me anything, but you know what he's like. Danny and his stupid hero complex. He'd do anything to protect his loved ones. It's not like he'd really kill himself if I asked him to."

"I said he'd cut his throat, not that he'd kill himself. There's a difference."

"What difference?" I shrieked. "Dead is dead, and no human being could survive that!"

"Yeah, but Danny isn't human," she pointed out.

I paused, trying to straighten out my thoughts and be the bigger woman in this situation. "He's half-human."

"So? It didn't mean he had to die like one of you dirt-crawlers."

"What?" I couldn't breathe. What the hell was she trying to say?

"He didn't tell you." She threw her hands up, eyes fading back to blue. "Of course he didn't. I'd strangle him, but that would defeat the point." She continued muttering, starting to pace a trench in the hideously pink carpet. Jazz's room had been the unofficial counselor's office of Team Phantom ever since the Reality Gauntlet mess years ago, and I'd seen Danny pacing that same stretch of carpet many times, gesturing wildly and ranting about his latest problem to an ever-patient Jazz. She looked so much like him sometimes. It was horrible.

She stopped suddenly, going still as only someone who didn't need to breathe could. Putting a hand on her forehead, she slumped down and went to sit in the chair across from me. "You don't know what you made him promise."

"He promised to stay with me, until death do us part. It's a standard Christian wedding vow." I blushed for a second, thinking of how romantic it had been. I was so happy that we could both admit our feelings; that he had promised himself to me.

"Yeah, yeah, mushy happy yadda yadda whatever," she said dismissively. "That part wasn't the problem." Voice rising, she continued, "The problem, you mortal fool, was when you asked Daniel James Fenton Phantom if he would die with you! You idiot! I hate you!"

I froze, wondering what the hell she could be talking about. "I just meant – I mean, he promised to stay with me as long as I was alive. It just seemed to make sense. I know it's morbid, but Danny doesn't mind that I'm morbid. I'm a Goth. He knew what he was getting into from the start." Danny and I had known each other for years before we started dating, and there was nothing she could say to that.

"You-", she cut herself off, clenching her fists and not looking at me. She tensed, her shadow blending with the fading evening. Her eyes were glowing again, green bleeding through a curtain of black bangs just like Danny's. What the hell was she so angry about? Was she angry about Danny paying attention to his girlfriend of ten years, instead of his supposed cousin from nowhere?

She closed her eyes, opening them to reveal blue eyes just like Danny's, which I couldn't look away from no matter how much I wanted to. "You have to listen," she said desperately, the beginnings of tears glistening in blue. "He swore."

"To spend his life with me, yeah. He practically proposed to me at the South Pole. Is this really such a big surprise?"

She looked down, continuing as though she didn't hear me. "He swore to die with you, Sam."

I waited for her to say something else, so I could find another hole in her argument. The best way to win a debate was to take your opponent's argument apart piece by piece, but she had to give me something to work with already!

"He swore to die with you."

"Again, so?" I asked, now genuinely curious.

"Humans die, Sam. It happens. In a hundred years, you'll be nothing but bones and letters on a grave marker."

"Yeah, I know."

"Really, Sam? Because here's something you didn't know, something Danny was too nice to tell you, just like always." Somehow, the way she said nice sounded like she meant cowardly. "He wouldn't have!"

"He wouldn't what?" I asked, pieces beginning to fall into place. Danny, who had been so shocked at the gray hairs mixed in with his mother's practical red hairdo. Danny, staring blankly into space at Mr. Foley's funeral as Tucker cried like a baby, Jazz holding the young man's hand as though it were a baby bird fallen from its nest to die. Danny, who was young and strong, who never seemed to run out of energy, who didn't seem to be part of the flow of time.

She smiled bitterly. "Now you're starting to get it. People change, Sam. It's a human thing. You're born, life sucks, and then you die."

"Stop quoting at me!" I snapped.

"Selfishness is only human, Sam. It sucks, but I can't blame you for wanting to keep him at your side for as long as possible. I can, however, hate you for twisting the knife. You made him swear to die with you, bound him to you in the worst way."

"I didn't mean anything! They're only words!"

"Words have power. Names are power. Those are some of the first laws, laws that you know by heart. Am I really supposed to believe that you conveniently forgot them for just long enough to trick him into mortality?"

"I didn't want to hurt him! I only wanted-"

"You wanted Danny. Well, you've got him. The only problem is that you can't let anyone else have him. You knew exactly what you were doing, didn't you?" she accused.

"I…" I had nothing to say to that.

"Right," giving me a knowing look. "Look, just, one thing? Two, actually, so we can be even and I don't have to waste my energy on stupid grudges."

I hesitated. She was giving me an out and I knew it, but I knew better than to say yes without knowing what I was agreeing to. "If I agreed, what would the conditions be?"

"One, you never use Danny's full name on him again. No matter what."

I sighed. I did tend to overuse that. "That's fair. Fine."

"Two, you let him go do what needs to be done. I don't care if you're in the middle of a date or your fucking wedding night, if the Portal opens and it's not the stupid Box Ghost, you let him go. Danny doesn't belong to you, Sam. He can't. He needs space, he needs the stars, he needs to fight and prove his existence. He's not human, and he can't act like one just because you want him to."

I was relieved. "That's it? I thought you'd make me do something horrible and pointless, like sort a storehouse of grain in one night."

"I don't hold grudges, Sam. They're too dangerous, and helping Danny is more important than getting even."

"Why?"

"Because he's family. As messed up as it was, you had one from the start. I never did, not until the Fentons went off on that research trip and Danny helped me get settled in here. You and Tucker helped set up my identity. I am grateful to you for pulling all those strings, but I paid my debt to you a long time ago. Now you owe me, and you're going to agree to my terms and keep your end of the bargain, or else." She didn't need to say any more. There were bad things reserved specifically for oath-breakers.

"Crap." I continued my mental tirade in the privacy of my mind. At least my thoughts are still my own.

"What?"

"Ugh. At the time, I honestly didn't realize what that promise would do. At least, not consciously."

"It doesn't matter if you didn't do it on purpose. The laws don't care, and neither do I. Now you will swear never to use Daniel James Fenton Phantom's true name against him again, and to release him from any obligation to myself when the need arises, when he is required to fulfill his duties. I want to hear exact words."

"All right, all right!" I huffed. I held my right hand over the left side of my chest, over my heart. "I, Samantha Velvela Manson, do swear never to use Daniel James Fenton Phantom's true name against him again. I do swear to release him from any obligation to myself when the need arises, and he is required to fulfill his duties."

The room hushed, the last of day's light streaming through the window between the blinds. She slumped forward, letting her head sink into her hands. "That's the best I'm going to get, I guess. You mind getting the blinds for me? It's getting dark, and I don't think Jazz will appreciate the local creepers seeing in through her window."

"Oh! Hang on, I'll get it." Grateful for something to do, I reached up and yanked the blinds closed. Those stupid pull cords are impossible to use unless you're six feet tall.

"You want me to get the light?"

"No. We're leaving anyway."

"Yeah."

"Um."

"What?"

"Am I really forgiven? Just like that?"

She looked at me with Danny's eyes, shrugging. "Why not? You promised not to do it again, and I can tell you're sorry. You don't need to say it. Just be more careful about what you talk people into, okay? Your little motivational speeches are going to come back to haunt you sooner or later."

"But-"

"But me no buts, Sam. You messed up, and it's too late to fix. You know Danny can't break a promise, not that kind. Neither can you, seeing as I witnessed the swearing of the oath."

"Well, yeah," I admitted. "Didn't you say you hated me?"

"I did. Now I don't."

"What the hell?"

She giggled, all smiles again. G-d, her mood swings were creepy. Danny's mood swings are not creepy, they're endearing. Not that I'll ever say that out loud.

"You might be forgiven, but I won't forget this. I still don't like you, Sam. But I don't have to like you. I trust you to look out for him, within limits, and that's good enough. I couldn't keep him caged. I know too well what it's like to be tricked into throwing my life away. It could be that this is for the best."

"How is Danny's lifespan getting cut short by possibly centuries for the best?" I asked bitterly.

Hand on the doorknob, she paused and turned back to me. "Because Danny is too human for eternity. Without you, he wouldn't really be himself anymore. You know what I mean."

I did know. I knew what he could become, in one of infinite horrible futures where he no longer wanted to be human. "Everything has a price. Love is infinitely precious-"

"-and infinitely painful," she finished for me, smiling softly, infinitely merciful.

She opened the door and left, leaving me without light.

Mercy might be cruel, but love was worse. I sank down onto the floor, letting the tears I was too proud to show fall. I knew they could sense my guilt, but both of them were too polite, too damn nice to ever mention it. This was just one more thing to be guilty about.

In my youthful stupidity, I took Danny's life. In my mature egotism, I made him throw away his chance at forever. She was right. I had far too much power over him, and at the same time, not enough. It's true that the promise was partly because I couldn't stand the thought of him ever loving someone else as he loves me, with his entire being. When he feels something, he holds nothing back. I can imagine his hatred, with no one capable of stopping him, no one to hold him back, and I know how it would end. It doesn't matter how it happens, with blood and fire or ice and searing light, it would end in the ruins of a dead world.

Danny is bright and kind, and still so innocently forgiving. Always forgiving, because if something happened that he could not forgive, he would destroy anything he could blame it on. Danny is nice because he's terrified of himself, and every time he nearly went too far, I stopped him. I don't want to lose him, not to another woman, not to death, not to madness. He's too loyal for the first, not mortal enough for the second – and nearly powerless against the third. I don't want him to die – but he can't live without me.

I don't know how to fix things. I can't just go back and un-say what I said, what he said, what she said. All I know right now is that life's a bitch.

I wonder what that makes eternity?

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A/N: Sam doesn't have a middle name in canon, so I got one from BehindTheName dot com. Velvela is the female version of Velvel, Yiddish for wolf. She is presumably European Jewish, so it's not too farfetched that she'd have a Yiddish middle name.

There's a reference to the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche in there, if you squint. I just threw it in.

Dani paraphrases the quote "You're born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there's a loophole." - Billy Graham. I honestly didn't know the original quote until looking it up just now.

This is a standalone future-fic, set about ten years after canon and referencing Phantom Planet.

Please read and review.

EDIT: Changed some names, one grammar fix.


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